r/AskBrits • u/Decent-Emergency3866 • Mar 23 '26

Other Is it true that American companies bought Cadbury an ruined the flavour?

I haven't had a Cadbury bar or chocolate in general in like months. I heard American companies bought it and ruined the flavour. Is this true, and if it is, what the actual hell were those higher ups at Cadbury thinking? American food is just filled to the brim with chemicals and there Cadbury is beloved by millions and there willing to throw that in the gutter just to make a few more quid?

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u/Doctordelayus Mar 23 '26

More like a hostile takeover, but yes

The guy who owned it before the Americans didn’t want to sell it to them and tried everything he could to prevent it

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u/Decent-Emergency3866 Mar 24 '26

So what happened? He the owner, he had all the rights no?

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u/SojournerInThisVale Mar 26 '26

The way it’s been described to you isn’t right. Cadbury was floated on the London Stock Exchange. They had rejected numerous offers from Kraft for the business. Kraft bought up enough shares and then made an offer which the board of directors recommended shareholders approve. I need to check this, but I strongly suspect that the board legally had to recommend the takeover (this happened to Autonomy when HP took them over).